This is the prefect Firefox add-on for the dreaded 404 message, or if you want to see which version of a page the search engines have in their cache. You can try five page cache/mirrors in turn: CoralCDN, Google Cache, Yahoo! Cache, The Internet Archive and the MSN/Live Cache. The search engine caches usually only have copies going back days or, at most, weeks but the Internet Archive may have copies going back to 1996. If you have installed Firefox 2 you may need to use the Nightly Tester Tool add-on to persuade Firefox that Resurrect Pages is compatible.

Googlebar has been updated to make it compatible with Firefox 1.5. It was possible to fool Firefox into allowing the earlier Googlebar extension to be installed by using the Nightly Tester Tools but one could not guarantee that all the buttons would work. Note that this is not the Toolbar provided by Google but a completely separate project. I much prefer the Mozdev Googlebar as it offers far more search options from the toolbar including video, book, Scholar, Maps, Local and Glossary search.

The latest version of Firefox, 1.5, has been released. New and improved features include:

* “drag and drop” feature for tabbed browsing so that you can re-arrange the tabs
* Improved pop-up blocker
*Addition of Answers.com now included in the integrated Search box.
* Improved Live Bookmarks feature for RSS feeds.
* New Automatic Update system
* New Clear Private Data tool so that you can clear all private information, such as history and form entries, via one settings window.

I have also noticed that it displays pages significantly faster.

You may find that some of your extensions may be disabled because Firefox thinks that they are not compatible with this latest version. I initially had a problem with Flashblock, Googlebar, TinyUrl creator and Pagerank. Checking for updates will sort out most of the “incomptibilities”. For the rest, try the Nightly Tester Tools extension. Primarily intended to check for new nightly builds of Firefox, it also has an option that tells Firefox your existing plug-ins can work with the latest download. There is a chance that an extension could cause problems but it worked OK with my collection.

Google Toolbar for Firefox

Google has at last launched a version of its toolbar for Firefox. It seems to have all the features of the IE version but appears to be missing several of the “special” searches that are incorporated into the separately developed Googlebar, such as Scholar, Print, Video, Dictionary and Glossary Search. Googlebar is also experimenting with adding Google Labs “Google Suggests” into the toolbar, although the version I tried froze on occasion.

I shall stay with Googlebar for the time being.

BugMeNot.com

If you are fed up with having to register to use free sites try this service. Type in the URL of the site and BugMeNot “lends” you a user name and password. The site claims to have log in details for half a million sites. For Firefox users there is an extension at roachfiend.com BugMeNot. When a site asks for a password, right click and select BugMeNot from the menu. The user name and password fields are automatically filled in.